by Lyla Payne
“I know I’ve pointed this out before, but Cole didn’t exactly do anything. You dumped him, and it was kind of preemptive.”
“He sent some poor, pregnant girl packing because she wasn’t good enough for him to bring home to mom and dad. You know he and I would have had the same ending, especially after my spectacular first meeting with his parents.” My throat throbbed. It had been two weeks, but I still struggled not to cry when I thought about Cole.
Emilie put a hand on my arm. “You don’t know that, Rubes. I saw you two together. It was something special, and from everything you told me, things were going great. Why would he get so involved with you—why would he sleep with you, after turning down everyone else—if he didn’t plan on seeing it through?”
The logic made sense, but relationships weren’t built on logic and I’d been burned by too many of them. Luckily, her phone buzzed before I could break down into sobs or scream at her for trying to convince me to get hurt worse later on.
“Quinn’s downstairs.”
We headed down the stairs and out the front door, where Quinn waited inside a limo, looking as striking as ever. Emilie melted into him and I averted my eyes as they greeted one another after a three-day break. He’d gone home with her for Christmas, avoiding his dad and easing the ever-present tension in her house. She said it had gone pretty well. They were better than ever.
They allowed me to float through the evening, keeping up the conversation at dinner and then on the way to the bar. Once we were there, the thumping bass and shouted laughter made talking impossible. I went through the motions, dancing with Emilie, giving Quinn a hard time, smiling when the guitarist from the band winked at me from the stage, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t want to be out pretending to have fun.
The old familiar itch to solve my problems with sex tried to struggle loose, but disappeared before I could dig in my nails. For the first time, it didn’t seem like the answer.
The countdown to midnight began and the guitarist showed up at my elbow. He was handsome in a Southern-rocker kind of way, his long, dark hair a deliberate mess and a pair of boots peeking from underneath his tight jeans.
“Adam,” he shouted, sticking out a hand.
“Ruby.”
The bar exploded into Happy New Year’s a few seconds later, streamers popping and confetti flying like thin, colorful snowflakes. Adam’s arm went around my waist and he pulled me into him, planting a kiss on my lips.
My entire body stiffened. I forced myself to relax into the moment—this was New Year’s Eve and a hot boy wanted to kiss me at midnight—but when his tongue pushed into my mouth I pulled back and patted his chest. “Happy New Year.”
He nodded. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
I wound my way back to our table, ignoring Emilie and Quinn’s still-going midnight kiss, and picked up my phone. Tears pricked my eyes and my throat throbbed. A painful sob wrenched lose when I saw a text message from Cole:
I miss you so bad it hurts.
***
I didn’t hear from Cole again over break, even though I checked my phone far more often than I cared to admit. I went back to Whitman a couple of days after Emilie and Quinn returned. The play opened in a week and we had plenty of tweaking still to be done.
Geoff had called and made sure I was coming in to audition for the next community production he was staging—Our Town. It was better than West Side Story, but still kind of blah, though playing Emily Webb was kind of a rite of passage. Those rehearsals would gear up as soon as the performances of Annie wrapped, so at least I wouldn’t have time to focus on my lack of a dating life.
He’s also asked if I’d do another curriculum segment at the Coterie. I wanted to, badly, and being with Caroline and Noelle and the other kids right now would be a great distraction, but running into Cole didn’t appeal to me. I hadn’t been able to shake this breakup as easily as all the others. It had been a month, but if I saw him, I knew I would cry.
God help me if we had any classes together this semester.
Opening Night for Annie was the Friday before classes resumed. Most of the students had already returned and we had sold out the entire weekend. Geoff mentioned that two of his friends planned to check me out again, probably incognito this time, and thinking about it made my heart race. It would go well—I felt great in the role, and for all of Evan’s snobbery was, he had great instincts onstage.
Normal preshow jitters infected me in the dressing room, the ones born of adrenaline and nervous excitement. I was putting the finishing touches on my stage makeup and tugging on my cowboy boots when a knock on the door made me jump three feet.
A stagehand glowered on the other side, his arms full of purple thistles. He thrust them at me. “Could you get your boyfriend to pick some non-attack flowers next time?”
He turned and hurried off before I could correct him about the boyfriend comment, even though the flowers were clearly from Cole. Part of the expectation about tonight had been the surety that he would be in the audience—he’d pretty much seen every performance of mine since last summer. I wanted to know he was sitting out there, wanted him there watching, and the pathetic fact made me want to punch myself in the face.
We’d called things off. Theatre was my domain. I didn’t need him here to have a good performance, or to feel proud of what I knew would be a great show.
But I still wanted him there. And that made me angry.
I plucked the note out of the flowers, tossing them on the dressing table and ignoring the scrape of the thorns across my forearms. My brain tried to force my fingers to rip the little card in two without reading it, but they wouldn’t comply, listening to my heart, instead. And my heart wanted a moment spent close to Cole.
You know you’ll be magic tonight, so I won’t bother telling you to break a leg. I wish I could be there to see your brilliance.
He wasn’t coming.
My heart sank into my belly, even though I had known it. He had shared his deepest secret with me, a source of obvious pain and shame—I’d read that on him one of the first times we’d met, when he’d insisted he wasn’t a hero, that he wasn’t perfect—and I had walked away. He might miss me as much as I missed him, but it didn’t mean I hadn’t done the right thing.
Cole deserved a girl his family would adore, a girl he could marry and stand beside with pride as her belly grew with the next generation of Stuarts, and a girl who would love the bits of him that weren’t so shiny.
After all of these days apart, all of the endless hours I’d had to think, one thing had become clear to me: I was the girl that loved Cole in spite of the mistakes of his past. I loved all of him, and I’d never wanted to be with anyone so badly in all of my life. The idea of walking through the next year and a half at Whitman without him made me ill, and the idea of moving to New York and falling in love with someone else made me want to puke.
I loved him enough to let him go, because although I might love him, I would never be the girl his family would adore, or the girl he could marry without a second thought.
***
The show went off without a hitch, and when Liam slunk out of the throng of congratulators in the lobby afterward, I managed a smile.
He smiled back, an apologetic one. “You were smashing, as always. And you look hot in that costume.”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the churning in my stomach. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry about the way I acted. You’re an awesome girl and you know it.”
“I’m not the grudge-holding type. How was Africa?”
He spent the next fifteen minutes telling me about his first film experience, and I finally shook him and went backstage to change.
Evan, Whitman University’s Frank Butler and my co-star, poked his head in the girl’s dressing room and grinned. “Great show.”
“You, too.”
“Listen, I’m starving, and remembered you always are after performances, too. Want to get a bite?” He
raised his eyebrows, a suggestion other than dinner darkening his soft brown gaze.
We’d done it before—gone home together after a performance. Maybe letting Cole go for real was as simple as sleeping with someone else. Perhaps that was the way to force my brain to move on. Evan was as good as anyone; I was in no danger of falling for him and it could be a one-time thing without either of us making a big deal out of it.
We grabbed omelets at a local twenty-four-hour breakfast place. Evan assumed I wanted to go home with him afterward, based on our history and also the fact that I asked if his roommates were home, and he even paid the check. Stand up guy.
His old house smelled slightly of mold, exactly as I remembered it from last year. Evan’s room stunk of boy—a mixture of dust bunnies and stale linens. Our mouths reconnected, feeling their way along old, overgrown paths, awkward but improving. He stripped off my shirt and we fell into the bed, my legs wrapped around his hips and his hands in my hair.
I shimmied out of my jeans after he managed to undo the button with one hand. His excitement pressed against me, throbbing and hard. I spent the entire time trying not to cry, trying not to imagine Cole’s face, Cole’s gentle, demanding, sure hands, and the way we moved together in an effortless surge toward mutual satisfaction that I’d never had with Evan, or Liam—or anyone else, for that matter.
When Evan’s fingers wriggled inside my underwear, I froze and jerked away. Tears filled my eyes then, refusing to be bitten back any longer, and I yanked my pants back on then felt around for my top.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Evan sat on the edge of the bed, watching me with a confused look that would have been comical if I didn’t want to kill myself for being so pathetic. “Is it me?”
“No. It’s me.” It was me. Evan hadn’t changed at all since the last time we rolled around naked in this room.
But I had. And this wasn’t enough anymore.
Chapter 23
I picked up Caroline a few weeks later, feeling badly for being so wrapped up in Cole and then my own heartbreak that our friendship had taken a backseat. The Wizard of Oz was playing at the artsy movie theatre near campus, and I knew she’d never seen it on the big screen. I’d invited Noelle, too, but she couldn’t come.
Caroline helped me have a good time, giggling over the way I dumped the entire bag of M&Ms into our popcorn and wide-eyed over the sight of one her favorite movies in the theatre. Afterward, we gathered our jackets and trash and decided to go get ice cream.
“Are you going to come back and help at the theatre?”
“I don’t know, kiddo. Maybe after Our Town is finished.” I felt bad lying to her, but I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t coming back. Maybe I could next year, after Cole graduated.
It was so loserly of me to avoid him. I felt stronger after this year. My path to New York took better shape with each performance I handed in, and I knew—just knew—things would work out for me there. Cole had shown me that, while I’d assumed choosing sex over feelings made me strong, it really just made me scared, and no matter how badly I hurt right now, I couldn’t go back to being that girl, either.
Right now, being alone was my best option. Focus on the future. On me.
“I asked Mr. Cole why you weren’t helping anymore.”
My heart thudded and I swallowed hard. “What did he say?”
“He got a funny look on his face and said he didn’t know. Did you guys have a fight?”
“Hey, Ruby.” A girl’s voice interrupted, flooding me with gratitude until I turned around.
Audra smiled, as frank and open as she was the first time I’d met her. A girl with long, dark hair and a sly, curious look about her stood at Audra’s shoulder, and they both sported Kappa letters on their pullover rain jackets.
I vaguely remembered meeting her at the Homecoming tailgate. Blair something.
“Hey.” I glanced down at Caroline, smoothing a hand over her silky blonde hair. “This is Caroline. Caroline, this is Mr. Cole’s sister, Audra.”
Audra’s eyebrows went up at the introduction, probably trying to figure out how this ten-year-old knew both her brother and me. “Hi, Caroline. You must be that great little actress my brother told me about.”
Caroline grinned. “I’m not as good as Ruby, but almost.”
Audra laughed. “I have no doubts. This is my friend, Blair Paddington. Blair, this is Ruby Cotton. You met at Homecoming.”
We all said hello and then moved toward the exit. Audra grabbed my arm at the last minute, pulling me back while Blair and Caroline wandered into the lobby, chatting about the movie.
“You still owe me coffee. What are you doing now?”
“I told Caroline I’d take her out for ice cream, then her mom is picking her up for some school program.”
“Meet me in an hour, then? At The Grind?”
I didn’t want to. It was impossible to spend time with any of the Stuarts and not be reminded of Cole—the way Audra smiled with her single dimple was no exception—but her eager sweetness was hard to resist. “Okay, but I can’t stay long.”
***
She waited for me at a table by the window, steam rising from what appeared to be a cup of tea. She motioned to the one across the table, waiting in a large red mug. “I ordered you tea. Sorry if you prefer coffee.”
“I like both. Thank you.” I shrugged out of my jacket and slung it across the back of the chair, then took a seat.
“I’m not here to tell you to get back with Cole,” she said after a moment of awkward silence. “I like you. Even if my brother did something to piss you off, or if you don’t like him or whatever, I still think we should be friends.”
“Okay….”
I didn’t know what exactly we had to talk about, but I didn’t need to worry. Audra chattered about a range of topics, touching on her holiday at home in Scotland, my performance as Annie, the fact that she hadn’t a clue what to major in after almost a whole year at Whitman, and the crush she had on a freshman Alpha Chi named Chace.
“So, what’s new with you?” she asked, finally taking a breath and sipping tea that had to be cold. I liked listening to her talk; she had an easy way about her and her voice soothed as easily as those of her brothers. Not to mention the longer she talked, the less I had to say about me.
“Not much. Annie ended and rehearsals started for Our Town. Whitman is going to try to cram in a spring play, too—I think Death of a Salesman—so those auditions will be coming up soon.”
“No rest for the weary actress, huh?”
“Nope.”
“You’re planning to give New York a go after graduation?”
“That’s the plan. There have been some pretty influential directors sniffing around, and I’ve still got another year of performances to round out my resume. I think I’ll be able to work.” I paused, a comment on the tip of my tongue that I hadn’t really considered until now, at least not consciously. Audra made me comfortable, though. “If it doesn’t work out, or if I get tired of the grind, I might teach acting. I really loved working with the kids at the Coterie.”
“Cole said you were really good with them. Why don’t you go back?”
I shrugged, trying to hide the fact that the simple sound of his name punched me in the stomach. Her keen emerald eyes said she didn’t miss it, though, and she reached over to cover my hand with hers. The simple gesture of friendship brought tears to my eyes but I blinked them back. I was tired of crying.
“Is it because of Cole?” When I nodded, she squeezed my fingers. “I know I said I wasn’t here to talk about him, or you guys, but we can if you want. What happened?”
“I think we wanted it to work more than it actually did work.”
She gave an unladylike, derisive snort. “Please. I might not have spent much time with the two of you, but all accounts from around campus and from the twins point to the opposite.”
&n
bsp; “Being compatible in bed and in life are two different things.”
“Ruby, just the fact that Cole took you to bed speaks volumes. He trusted you.” She leveled her gaze, making me feel trapped underneath the accusation. “He told you about Poppy. And you left. You judged him.”
“Not because I think he should feel responsible for her death, Audra. God. We just…I’m her. Not suitable. Look at how I met your parents, for shit’s sake. How could I ever have faced them again?”
“First of all, you let people make you feel worse about your family than you should. I know for a fact that Cole doesn’t give a shit how much money you have or where it came from, and the rest of my family doesn’t, either. Second, we all laughed our asses off and teased Cole mercilessly for the rest of the day after you let him have it.”
“Teased him for being involved with such an uncouth loudmouth, you mean.” My throat tried to close again.
“See, that’s what I’m saying. You hate that people assume the worst of you, but you go ahead and assume the worst of other people. I know it’s probably because someone or a bunch of someones treated you shitty, but it’s not attractive.”
My irritation spiked at her rough words, but eased as quickly at her caring expression. She wasn’t being mean, and if I was honest, she was right.
“We teased him because we’ve watched him self-destruct over what happened to Poppy. We’ve hurt while he’s withdrawn, refused to date, refused to believe that he deserves to be happy with a girl again while Poppy’s gone forever—refused to allow himself intimacy because he’s determined not to be irresponsible. I swear, when you were shouting at him about his stuffy morals, we were all grinning at each other like idiots, trying not to laugh out loud. My parents would love to shake your hand for being the girl who finally made Cole happy again. Except now he’s not.”
